Use of carbohydrates, including dextrins, for oral delivery

Carbohydrates are used extensively in the pharmaceutical sector as excipients to facilitate packaging and delivery of drugs. These formats include tablets, capsules, liquids, suspensions, gels, inhalation products and strips. Apart from being very diverse in structure and properties, carbohydrates benefit from a safe history of usage with a positive health profile. These incorporate a number of starch derivatives. Dextrins represent hydrolysis products of starches and are thus α-glucans with both α-(1,4) and α-(1,6) bonds. They are used in different formats in pharmaceutical systems, and provide a number of technical advantages over other materials. This short review focuses on the use of carbohydrates and especially dextrins as oral delivery vehicles and their associated functionality and properties in these systems.